TNO Event @ INTERPOL World 2017: Innovation for a Safe and Secure Future

SINGAPORE, 6 July 2017. TNO organised a side-event at INTERPOL World 2017. INTERPOL World is the global exhibition and congress platform that encapsulates the vision of a safer world through the use of innovation and multi-stakeholder engagement. Smart surveillance and Dark Web Solutions were the innovations for a safe and secure future that TNO demonstrated. The session in the Innovation Theatre was visited by more than 100 (while designed for 50!) partners and relations from government, industry and academia.

Since February 2017, TNO is the first research partner of INTERPOL. Mr Noboru Nakatani, executive director of INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation, opened the event by emphasizing the relevance of our partnership, and the impact we achieved so far with our training on darknet and cryptocurrencies.

Lead scientist of TNO Singapore, Mr Paul Booij MSc continued the event by demonstrating solutions towards pro-active video surveillance. Given the growth in available camera feeds, it is impossible to eye-ball each, so new technologies are required to support. A proof-of-concept was presented that automatically detects with state of the art precision aggressive actions in footage of different party zones in a city center.

Dr Mark van Staalduinen, innovation manager at TNO Singapore, continued with TNO’s Dark Web Solutions. Four hypotheses were discussed on the recent ransomware attacks WannaCry and (not)Petya. Thereafter, three partners that support the Dark Web Solutions program joined the podium and addressed their contributions. Mr Herre Roelevink explained Manifera‘s DevOps role to productize a number of proof of concepts and maintain them as services, for example the Dark Market that is used in the training as a serious game. Professor Pieter Hartel of Delft University of Technology addressed how our joint bitcoin research resulted in even deeper research towards blockchain security by design. Finally, Ms Anita Hazenberg, director Innovation at INTERPOL just started in July, asked for more collaboration to not only understand today’s threats, but more important to understand the yet unknown future threats. It’s all in the data! Key takeaway: the pace of technology requires a continuous state of research and innovation by the security community to really get ahead of cybercrime.

Before the networking activities started, his excellency Mr Jacques Werner, ambassador of the kingdom of the Netherlands in Singapore emphasized the importance and believe in the strength of the triple helix to realize the cyber security ambition. The closure of this event was the last contribution to an official TNO event of the ambassador before his term in Singapore ends. So words of mutual thanks and appreciation were shared, since we started this cyber security journey four years ago and together we achieved impressive results. Finally, Mr Werner draw attention to the audience for the upcoming Cyber Security Mission in September during the Singapore International Cyber Week that will be organised by the embassy and TNO.

INTERPOL World was a great success, and many thanks to those who made it possible!